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Dick Tracy, 6/27/19

Hey, remember last summer when Sawtooth took in a midnight showing of Rocky Horror in order to bite a guy to death and Sam Catchem happened to be there? I guess Rocky Horror is one of Dick Tracy’s “things” now and you know what Dick Tracy does with its “things”: gives a villain a really on-the-nose name related to them and a corresponding facial deformity. Looking forward to seeing how Tony Rocky Horror’s skull shape somehow coveys the concept of unintentional camp!

Gil Thorp, 6/27/19

OH MY GOD I immediately take back everything bad I said about Gil Thorp yesterday because today we learn that this summer’s real Beloved Character From The Past is in fact Hadley V. Baxendale! Hadley was the star of the very first Gil Thorp storyline covered on this site, which involved her and her boyfriend and fellow feminist agitator Steve Luhm fighting for full-sized lockers and equal cheer squad support for the girls’ teams. I’ve always wondered what happened to her over the last fifteen years, and since she partnered up with a pro basketball player/intellectual while her ex became a teve dropped out of college and became a bitter janitor, I’d say she’s doing pretty well for herself!

My only complaint is that the comics colorists don’t know what to do with the front of her hair, which is supposed to be a Sontag-esque grey streak, which she’s had since high school. Also I’m not really sure what “you were” is supposed to mean in the final panel. Like, did Coach Thorp remember “Oh, Hadley’s like super political, she probably isn’t going to change her name after marriage, which I guess means … she’s going to change her name … before marriage? That’s how it works, right? I mean, she’s gotta change her name sometime.”

Shoe, 6/27/19

The thing I like best about this strip is that Skyler is sitting in this chair, inches away from the TV, his eyes heavy with ennui, just like we’ve seen his uncle again and again and again. It’s as if he’s daring the Perfesser to make some snide remark about millennials and their darn screens.

Marvin, 6/27/19

Remember when Vince Neil, at the height of his Mötley Crüe decadence, did an incredibly insincere anti-drug PSA? That’s pretty much the vibe I’m getting from today’s Marvin. “Kids, you might think from the usual jokes in this strip that sitting around in a diaperful of your own piss is fun. But what if I told you about, uh, butt mold? Pretty gross, huh?” [goes back to making jokes about how sitting around in a diaperful of your own piss is fun three times a week for the next six years]

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Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 6/17/19

Oh hey, remember that Barney Google and Snuffy Smith crossover business from a couple weeks ago that I quickly lost interest in? Well, it was all a run-up to the strip’s 100th anniversary. Thanks for 100 bodacious years, the strip’s titular characters say, though given how the history of the strip has played out, really Snuffy should be saying “Thanks for 85 bodacious years,” and Barney should reply “Thanks for 35 bodacious years, and then decades of extremely rare bodacious cameos, and then more frequent bodacious appearances starting in 2012 for whatever reason.” I was going to make fun the today’s boast (threat?) that this strip will last another century or maybe even more, but it’s honestly pretty wild it’s lasted this long, so who’s to say what the future holds? Anyway, let’s see how the other strips in the King Features stable are kissing Barney Google and Snuffy Smith’s ass today!

Mark Trail, 6/17/19

Kudos to Mark Trail for dispensing with its contractual obligation with a bit of confusing dialogue rather than trying to integrate Snuffy into the wold of the strip, possibly as a grotesque, gnomish hermit living deep in the Sonoran Desert. Instead we’re just left with Mark looking at Doc thinking “Is this … a bit? Is he doing a bit? Couldn’t he just call from his cell phone? We all have cell phones, right?”

Shoe, 6/17/19

I’m also fond of today’s Shoe, in which the sapient bird-characters threaten to kill and eat (hopefully in that order) the beloved sapient (?) horse-character Spark Plug. Then they’ll eat Barney and Snuffy too! How dare these humans come to the treetop realm of the bird-men! They must be punished!

Six Chix, 6/17/19

Six Chix gives a shoutout to Barney’s … famous … self-driving car? Maybe this is a reference to Waymo, the autonomous vehicle company that spun off of Google, or maybe it’s just acknowledgement that Barney will need a new form of transportation now that the birds have eaten Spark Plug.

Family Circus, 6/17/19

Meanwhile, that other venerable institution of the funny pages, the Family Circus, absolutely cannot be bothered to say anything nice about the birthday boys. Oh, your weird urban-sharpie-turned-hillbilly-minstrel-show strip is a hundred years old? Who cares. It’s Father’s Day week, and that means Jeffy Keane is going do a strip where he pretends to be his brother insulting his sister while giving their dad a day off. Fuck Dolly and her shitty toaster-operation skills and fuck Barney Google and Snuffy Smith: that’s the official Family Circus position.

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Mother Goose and Grimm, 6/5/19

Just about every animator and cartoonist eventually dabbles with a “Duck Amuck“-style plot where the characters grapple with the nature of their own reality. Today’s Mother Goose and Grimm is a particularly disturbing take, though, with Mother Goose going bug-eyed with panic as she realizes she’s dissolved her beloved dog’s body into nothingness. Only his eyes remain, hanging in mid-air, leading to an important question: are eyes the soul of a cartoon character? Makes you think!

Shoe, 6/5/19

I’m extremely put off by the way Shoe is making direct eye contact with the reader in the second panel, as if to say, “Get it? I, Shoe, the title character in this comic strip, walk around naked at all times, and maybe you’ve been reading this strip for years and just assumed it’s a weird visual quirk that everyone involved in the strip’s production has long forgotten about, but: nope! I’m naked, other characters in this strip wear clothes, I’m violating every in-universe social norm, but they can’t stop me. Nobody can stop me. It’s now official Shoe canon that I’m a sick pervert bird-man who likes making everyone feel uncomfortable, because that’s how I get off.”

Gasoline Alley, 6/5/19

Please sign my change dot org petition to require that every Gasoline Alley strip end with one of the characters saying “Huh?”, thus assuring the reader that they aren’t meant to really understand anything that anybody is saying.

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 6/5/19

WELP HERE IT IS

BARNEY GOOGLE HAS STUMBLED INTO CAMP SWAMPY

IT’S THE COMICS CROSSOVER EVENT THAT NOBODY WANTED OR ASKED FOR BUT WE’RE GONNA GET IT ANYWAY, BY GOD